


I want you to know that this is torture. . .

by Ninkasa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:58:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninkasa/pseuds/Ninkasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg doesn't want to be protected. Not really. She just wants him to know that his siblings are a pain in the ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I want you to know that this is torture. . .

**Author's Note:**

> This is set Mid-S6, a few months after Caged Heat, but definitely before The Man Who Would Be King.

The sons-of-bitches struck without any kind of warning.

Of course, Meg supposed that if they had given a warning, it would have defeated their purpose, but still. . .

She thought she should have seen it coming. The fact that they caught her off-guard made her angrier than the fact that they’d come after her in the first place.

Castiel had warned her that someone might eventually start paying attention to what he was doing.

And when he’d said “what”, she’d heard “who” and had taken the warning with as much seriousness as was possible when his tongue was pressed against her belly button and the door handle of the bathroom stall was digging into her back.

Now she kind of wished she’d taken it more seriously.

There was a moment when she landed down in the middle of her apartment -- which they couldn’t angel-proof because then HE couldn’t get in either -- where Meg considered just leaving and not coming back and sure as fuck not telling him where she was going.

Instead she peeled the layers of jacket, shirt and bra that were now destroyed from weapons and attack she had not been prepared for and dropped them into a pile on the bathroom floor. She laid the angel sword she’d taken from him -- it felt like years now -- and laid it carefully onto the side of the tub before turning on the hot water and padding back into the bedroom to retrieve a clean t-shirt.

She frowned down at her phone and sent a quick text, just in case he wasn’t in the loop and hadn’t heard her swearing from wherever on Heaven or Earth he was.

It wasn’t specific. But it was cryptic enough to get his attention. 

Meg walked back into the bathroom and shed her boots, jeans and underwear before slipping into the tub. 

She leaned back slightly, dragging her feet up to rest on either side of the tub so she could sink further down.

The entire situation was ridiculous and deep down, she KNEW that this wouldn’t last forever. It COULDN’T last like this. Either because the angels were going to kill her or they were going to kill him.

Or the two of them were going to kill each other.

Right now, the angels seemed to think that she had information that she didn’t. Because really, they didn’t talk about work very much. Because she didn’t care and the more information he shared with her, the more likely it was for his opposition to come after her.

The fact that he didn’t trust her remained unspoken, really.

Meg frowned at her cell-phone as it continued to not chime like she was expecting it to. Not that she expected him to jump whenever she called, but really. . .she had just been attacked by his damned siblings, the least he could do was respond in a timely manner.

She took her time cleaning off the bits of mud and trying to work out the knots and kinks that had settled in her meat suit’s muscles as she washed her hair several times just because she could. Meg let the water out of the tub and dried off slowly, still frowning at her phone as she moved the angel sword over to the sink where she could reach it.

Maybe he wasn’t getting service in Heaven right now. She pulled the t-shirt over her head, and padded towards her bed. Meg climbed into the bed, setting the phone on the nightstand and the sword carefully under her pillow where she could keep her hand tight around it while she slept.

It was. . .unlikely that the angels who had been after her earlier had followed her here. And even if they had, it would take them awhile to track her here since she’d backtracked several times before landing there.

She liked this apartment and she wasn’t willing to give it up just yet.

Meg turned off the light and settled down under the blankets. Then she had to climb out of bed to find her phone charger and plug it in on the nightstand just in case the battery died in the night and he couldn’t get in touch with her.

She let herself fall into what could only be labeled as a fitful sleep. Which was a sign that she should probably have just gotten out of bed and dealt with it. She didn’t, though. She just tugged the blankets up over her head and kept listening for either her phone to chime or someone to bust into the apartment and kill her.

She must have drifted off at some point because the next thing Meg knew someone was shaking her foot. There was a moment of terror when Meg closed her hand over the angel knife and sat straight up before it registered that if this was someone coming to kill her, they wouldn’t be waking her up gently. 

And then it registered who was sitting at the foot of her bed and Meg set the knife down carefully.

“You could have called, you know.”

Meg realized that sounded bitchy. Hell, even before it came out of her mouth, she was wincing as she tried to disentangle herself from the blankets.

Castiel smiled in response to this. “I would have,” he said after a moment. “But I thought you would be. . .annoyed at the phone waking you.” He paused here and then said, “I got your message.”

Meg wondered what message for a moment. She’d actually sent him several since she’d seen him last -- what? -- two weeks ago, now. Mostly little comments and pictures determined to distract him and remind him that she was still around and that it wasn’t just Heaven that required his attention. She’d also drunkenly sent him a video of her singing along with Nicki Minaj. Meg didn’t know what he did with all the messages she sent him. But she had a feeling he saved most of them. 

Considering he was here hours after she’d sent the message saying his family had just tried to kill her, it was probably THAT message that he was talking about. She crawled out of the blankets and came to sit closer to where he was sitting at the edge of the bed. 

“Not that I expect you to rush in and save me,” she said after a moment, because she wanted to be sure they had that sorted out right now. “But it kind of was your family that thought I’d look good on a pike.”

He frowned, which was usual for him, really. Smiles were few and far between. Actually, she suspected she was about the only one who ever got a smile out of him these days and Meg was trying really hard not to examine that too closely.

“I am aware,” he said, softly, as if he thought this was a secret. Maybe it was. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to find out that his brosefs were attacking her. Maybe it wasn’t the other guy’s men like she’d thought. Maybe it was his. Either way, they could suck it as far as Meg was concerned. She hadn’t done a damned thing to be a cause for alarm since Crowley had died in that prison and she intended to keep it that way. 

Since she was apparently being watched now and everything.

“So,” Meg said, folding her legs underneath her as she moved down to where she was next to him at the foot of the bed. “How’s things?”

She didn’t know when they’d started turning up on each other just to talk. At first it had been very physical. She had been in New Orleans maybe two weeks after the prison debacle when she’d realized she was being watched. She’d turned to see who it was and there’d been a mess of hands and tongues and teeth and tugging of clothing as she’d realized who it was and more importantly _why_. He’d somehow had the presence of mind to transport them to some empty motel room above the French Quarter. Which was a sign right there of the differences between them. Meg would have happily fucked him against the wall he’d pinned her to if he’d let her.

And afterwards, he’d left. Quietly, without much of a word to her in a way that had almost made Meg look and see if he’d left her money on the table.

There were other cities after that. Other motel rooms until they all ran together after awhile. He was enthusiastic and aggressive and Meg found herself dizzy sometimes from the pace at which things happened for a while.

That was the part no one would believe, Meg was sure of it. Not the Winchesters or the damned angels in Heaven. Not even the few demons she knew if she was inclined to talk about such things. 

He’d sought her out first. He’d initiated -- well, no. Meg supposed she technically had started it in the prison when she’d kissed him. Something was there that hadn’t been before. No. No, it had been there since Carthage, if she were being honest with herself. But there had been other fights and other problems and Meg wasn’t stupid enough to go chasing after an angel just because he’d caught her attention for five minutes.

But he could chase after her all he wanted, and she let him. And no one would believe it if they were told. And it was hard NOT to tell. Not to find Sam and Dean and tell them EXACTLY what their angel friend got up to when he wasn’t around them. But that way lied madness and since the Winchesters had been silent and busy with Sam’s soul and whatever else was going on, she was okay with letting that lie for now.

The point was that somewhere along the lines, it had stopped being just about sex -- although, that was still there and great and whatever -- but somewhere along the way, they’d started actually talking to each other. Not in great detail and not at all about anything that was going on in Heaven, but she got the gist of when there was a battle that had gone badly or when something had gone particularly right.

The fact that they were talking at all was something that Meg was discovering she liked. She didn’t have many people she talked to, not many she _wanted_ to talk to on a regular basis so discovering that the angel was one of them was a bit of a shock that she’d gotten used to over time.

She raised an eyebrow now at him as the turned to look at her and shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Very much the same,” he said. He paused for a moment and then continued. “I apologize that I couldn’t get here sooner. I -- came when I could.”

Meg found herself smirking slightly at that comment, but she knew what he meant, so she let it pass. “I figured,” she said. “You’re not usually one to let ‘I almost died’ sit in your Inbox for a long time.”

She hesitated for a moment and as she did, he started speaking again.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I cannot --” He paused for a moment and then started again. “I cannot promise you that will not happen again. I can tell you that the ones who attacked you this evening will not be pursuing you again, but as for what Raphael or even my own followers do, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Meg frowned at him now. It wasn’t that she intended for him to protect her. That hadn’t been why she’d texted him. She thought that had already been made clear. If she wasn’t yelling for help when she got jumped by what was left of Crowley’s followers, then she wasn’t going to start yelling for help when it was an angel doing the jumping.

Except for that part where she had done exactly that.

“I didn’t ask you to,” she said after a moment. 

After the initial shock and elation over the fact that for some bizarre reason she now had an angel in her bed on a regular basis had passed, it had become clear that this hadn’t changed either of their current situations. If anything, it had just made things worse and Meg had the feeling that he came to her specifically when he needed a moment’s peace or respite and she tried not to examine that too closely because then she would start rolling her eyes and they’d already had the conversation about how she wasn’t exactly the kind of girl who swooned over declarations of love. Although she did get a little doe-eyed when he brought her coffee. 

She did call him sometimes just because she was bored or wanted to talk to someone. Although it was rare because she never knew if she could be calling him when he was in the middle of a fight or when something important was going on and -- though she’d hate to admit it -- she wouldn’t be able to stand it if her distraction was the thing that got him killed. 

She wouldn’t be thrilled if he got himself killed either, but the guilt wouldn’t be there as much.

He smiled at her again and she wondered if he’d said something she hadn’t heard or if it was just in response to what she’d said. Why he’d find that funny, she didn’t know, but she often found she had as hard a time understanding him as he did her.

“No,” he said now, although the smile stayed in place and Meg was confused again until he kept speaking. “No, you don’t ask,” he continued. “But it does not change the fact that you would not be in danger if you -- if we --”

Meg rolled her eyes now. “Okay. Stop.” She needed a cigarette. “You’re not in control of what your siblings do anymore than you’re in control of what the Winchesters do or I am in control of what Crowley’s minions do.” 

She hesitated for a moment. A long moment where she was feeling a bit uncomfortable before she shook her head. “You can’t protect me all the time,” she said. Even when she acted sometimes as if she expected it, she knew that she couldn’t really expect it and the fact that he was the only. . .being in existence who seemed to find her as something worth protecting was something she was still trying to work out in her own mind.

Meg shook her head emphatically now. “You can’t,” she said, realizing she might sound slightly hysterical or maybe that was just in her own head. “Because if you try, you’ll end up dead yourself and you are not putting that on me.”

He didn’t say anything, but was staring at her with that wide-eyed stare he got sometimes and Meg felt some of that anger that had just hit her deflate. “Just. . .answer me when I call from now on, okay?” she said. “Unless you hear about an attack and I don’t text you, then you can kill whoever you want. Because that likely means that they’re the ones that killed me and I don’t want to think about someone who killed me carrying on their existence like it’s not a thing.”

He tipped his head to the side now, staring at her still in that way he did and after a moment, he nodded. “I can. . .I will answer you first from now on,” he said slowly. She had a feeling he wanted to say something else, so Meg leaned forward to catch onto his hand and kiss him firmly so he would stop talking for a moment.

After a second, she felt him relax and react to her kiss and Meg felt the tension in her let go as his hands came up to catch in her hair. This she could handle, this she was used to. It was the feelings and worry and words that got to her sometimes and she didn’t know what to do, whether to kick him out or just let it go. But the physical part, that she could do. Easily.

Meg reached up to tug on his tie, grinning slightly as she did so. “See?” she said, grinning. “I don’t need you to protect me. I need you to help me forget that I might need protecting.”

She closed her eyes when he moved to kiss the top of her head, but she felt him smile as he murmured. “I can do that.”

It was as close as they were going to get to an understanding. Meg figured they could keep it as long as possible. At least until the next crisis popped up.


End file.
